Page 31

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IN WHICH THE PARTY RECOVERS WITH A SHORT REST

“Are they going to be okay?”

Yrra, Daethie, and I sat together on the outskirts of the wetlands, admiring the city skyline and watching the sun make its way down to the horizon.

The rest of our gang lined the ground in front of us, sleeping peacefully.

Getting them through the swamp had been a massive pain in the ass, but we hadn’t encountered any other dangers.

This line of work was anything but glamorous. Most people didn’t realize that a life without rules meant hard work and sometimes going days without a bath or clean clothes. Not knowing where your next meal would come from, or facing things out of a nightmare.

Yrra considered my question before responding. “They’ll wake soon, but given the combination of nykse song and my venom, they’ll probably be dazed for a while.”

I nodded, making myself comfortable. “You did well out there,” I told Yrra. That didn’t even come close to being the praise he deserved, so I kept going. “I couldn’t have done it without you. I mean, you legitimately saved all of our butts.”

“He wasn’t the only one putting in work, if you’ll recall,” Daethie interjected, even as a little satisfied smile pulled at Yrra’s lips.

“Good point. I take it back—that was a team effort.”

“Hm.” Yrra tapped a finger to his cheek. “You have mud on your face.”

I quickly wiped at my face with the cleanest part of my sleeve, which wasn’t saying much. Remembering that all of my clothes were at the bottom of the swamp along with our packs, I heaved a sigh. “Do you think it would be worth going back to get our stuff?”

Yrra cast a sidelong glance in the direction of the swamp. “We should.”

“Tsk. Not looking forward to that.”

“I can babysit the boys until you get back,” Daethie offered, hopping over to Yrra and plopping herself beside him. Yrra offered his hand as a seat, and she climbed into his palm.

“How kind of you,” I drawled. Shaking my head, I lay back against the cool moss and squinted at the summer sky.

It was going to be a cloudless night, by the look of it.

Stars were already beginning to emerge, eager to start their shift.

Could be worse. It could be storming like nobody’s business on top of being a miserable day of travel.

“So you’re familiar with nykse .” I didn’t want to push Yrra to talk more than he was comfortable, but it was difficult to wrap my head around how he’d risen to the occasion.

“Nope. Never seen one before,” Daethie responded.

I shot her a scathing look. “Then maybe I wasn’t talking to you.”

“It’s not my first experience with them,” Yrra admitted. “It’s not uncommon to come across other water dwellers. They might resemble people, but they’re mindless animals. Nuisances at best… and to males who haven’t evolved to be immune, a fate worse than death.”

Something lit up in a shadowed corner of my memory.

Hohem had said something about them in the past, hadn’t he?

Nykse weren’t that different from the human concept of sirens, with a twist. They couldn’t reproduce alone, so they lured in men of other races for breeding purposes.

Once they were… finished , they would drown and eat them.

A cold shiver ran through my body at the thought of what would have been our friends’ fate if we hadn’t been able to do anything.

Or maybe the shiver was due to the fact I was still soaked through. What I wouldn’t give for a warm, fluffy towel right about now.

“Well, we were lucky you were there,” I said quietly. “All of us.”

Yrra ducked his head, uncomfortable with the praise. It was crazy to think that he’d taken charge of the situation and gotten us to safety a matter of hours ago. The thought brought a smile to my face. Perhaps fueled by residual adrenaline, a giddy mirth overtook me.

Yrra and Daethie looked at me like I was crazy.

I squeezed words out in between bouts of laughter. “It just occurred to me that you’ve spoken more today than you have in the last revolution. To think, all it took to get you out of your shell was the threat of a near-death experience.”

Yrra blinked, not sure how to respond.

“You’re not wrong!” Daethie nodded thoughtfully. She leaned against Yrra’s thumb, not unlike a cat cuddling up to someone’s leg. “But it’s all right that you’re quiet. Makes it easier for someone else to get a word in compared to some people around here.”

Yrra didn’t respond, but the tips of his ears took on a darker shade, and his thumb moved against her cheek as if giving her an affectionate stroke in return.

We sat together in companionable silence.

Figuring we had some time to spare, I practiced drawing and holding mana as best I could while running on limited rest. It was difficult to sit in place and focus past the discomfort of being tired, hungry, thirsty, and wearing wet clothes.

My neck could barely support the weight of my head.

Night arrived. A curious volleyball-sized moth covered in downy fluff visited our meadow, observing us from a respectful distance as it tried to determine if there was any carrion for the taking.

Yrra shooed it off. At last, the boys began to stir.

Lu roused first, an intelligible groan emanating from his chest like an off-tune instrument.

“Why am I on the ground?” he mumbled. He tried to sit up, his wings jerking underneath him in an attempt to give him a boost, before settling back against the ground.

His next exhale was an indignant huff. Slowly, he tilted his head one way, then the other.

Debris skittered down his shoulder in clumps.

He looked down at it, eyes crossing with the effort.

“And… why are my ears full of moss?”

I got up to help him. “It’s a special gift. From the Goddess of stupid questions.”

“Huh.” Lu blinked. “Haven’t heard of her. Must be a southern one?”

My lips pressed together to hold back laughter. “Yeah, a southern one.” I offered a hand, but he made no move to take it, maintaining a distant stare instead.

“Maybe… I ought to stay here awhile,” he reasoned, his tone apologetic. “But I’d like answers, if it’s all the same. What happened?”

I crouched beside him, brushing swamp debris out of his hair. “Apparently, the swamp wasn’t uninhabited. We ran across a pod of hungry nykse . Yrra saved us—if not for him, we’d be dead. Well, you guys would be.” I nodded at the twins lying nearby.

Yrra looked away, embarrassed.

Lu raised the hand the waterfolk had bitten, scrutinizing it with narrowed eyes. It dangled from his wrist, limp. “Waterfolk venom. Smart. With a paralytic in our systems, we couldn’t have moved for anything, not even a nykse ’s song. Can’t say I’m fond of the sensation, though. ”

Yrra ducked his head. “I’m sorry.”

Lu let his hand fall and heaved a sigh. “Don’t be. So, what are we doing now?”

“Well…” I exchanged a glance with Yrra. “We were waiting for you guys to wake up. We sort of had to leave our packs behind. I have our money still”—I patted my belt, from which the pouch of vodt dangled—“but our clothes, food, tents—all that is gone.”

Lu’s hand went to the waterlogged satchels at his waist. His eyes closed.

“It was necessary,” Yrra said quietly.

“It was. Unfortunately.” We didn’t even have fresh water, and it had been too long since I last had something to drink.

Clearing my parched throat, I continued.

“We have to decide if it’s worth going back for them.

Otherwise, we should move on to Solfarin.

We’re so close, and we can get supplies there. ”

I tried to keep the longing out of my tone, but I couldn’t quite help it.

We were almost there; we could be in Munarzed in less than a week.

If all went well, and we found the Kereti girl quickly, we could be back home within another month.

Or a month and a half after the pit stop to drop her off home and get our reward—couldn’t forget that.

Spending the night digging through muck to recover our things wasn’t particularly appealing by comparison. Plus, I wasn’t looking forward to another run-in with nykse .

A faint rustling in the grass drew my attention to where Hohem pulled himself onto his elbows, wincing all the way.

His gaze fell on the body an arm’s length away.

“Vyrain?” he whispered. When there was no response, he dragged himself across the distance.

I hurried to his side as he none-too-gently shook his brother’s arm.

“Careful,” I warned him, reaching out to stop him. “He’ll be fine. Just sleeping it off. You should rest too; you’ve been through a lot.”

Hohem paused his efforts to fix me with a bewildered stare. “Sleeping what off? ”

“ Nykse ,” came the grim response from Luthri behind me. “I don’t remember any of it either, but apparently they were hiding in the pools. Yrra and Mar got us to safety.”

Hohem’s eyes fluttered shut.

“You’re welcome,” I added, eyeing the scuffs and scratches along his limbs. “You and Vyrain got the worst of it. You were closer when they started singing, and Yrra had to carry you both. Pretty sure your heads knocked together more than a few times.”

“With any luck, it’ll have knocked some of my sense into him,” Vyrain muttered from the ground. Relief flooded through me. I’d known we were all in one piece, but seeing everyone awake and alert was reassurance I hadn’t realized I needed. The band was whole once more.

Hohem’s head snapped around, and his shoulders dropped when he saw Vyrain was all right. He slouched against his brother with an exaggerated sigh.

“Goddess, I hope not. I could do without your idea of ‘sense.’”

Vyrain gave Hohem’s arm an affectionate pat before letting his hand fall back to the ground. “Respectfully, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Disrespectfully, I know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Well, then.” I clapped my hands together. “Now that everybody’s awake, we have a decision to make. Obviously, it’s late. You may have noticed that we don’t have the tents set up.”

Blinking, Vyrain surveyed our surroundings. “What happened to the tents?”

“They’re gone,” Daethie piped up as she came to join us. “Lost to the swamp.”

Hohem sat bolt upright. “You can’t be serious,” he exclaimed.

“Excuse me?” I crossed my arms. “How exactly do you see the two of us hauling our packs out alongside your unconscious asses? It was all I could do to keep Lu’s head above water.”

“So I have your tender love and care to thank,” came an abrupt purr by one ear. Startled by Luthri’s silent approach, I nearly smacked him silly .

“Don’t do that,” I hissed, putting space between us.

“What about our water?” Vyrain asked, wincing as he sat up. “I could use a drink.”

“Gone too,” I admitted. “Everything except what we have on us. And I don’t even know if I could find our bags again if I looked. We don’t all have Luthri’s directional prowess.”

“So moving on seems like the best course, no?” Hohem studied our faces one by one. “We’ll pick up the necessities in town and get this job done. Do we have enough money?”

“It’ll depend on what prices are like around here, but we should have enough for the basics.

” Untying the pouch from my belt, I knelt on the ground to count.

We’d barely spent anything thus far, with Cantal’s help and living off the land, but we also hadn’t started with much.

As I stacked coins, my lips moving without sound, a hand bearing another pouch was thrust into my view.

“This too.” Luthri gestured for me to take it.

“Been holding out on us, bird boy?” Vyrain remarked, eyeing the pouch.

“Ooh.” Daethie half-flew, half-skipped to kneel by my side. “We finally get to see what the son of a great mender travels with. A fortune awaits!” She rubbed her hands together eagerly as I opened the pouch to pool our money together.

Lu reached up to scratch at the back of his head. “Well, it’s not like that’s my life savings. But we’re friends now, so might as well share. It should be enough to replenish what we lost.”

I stared at the money in my hands. Combined, it was more than I’d ever seen in one place—easily enough to cover a few canteens, food, and even proper lodging if we wanted to splurge.

I could only hope that it would be enough for passage to Munarzed.

Shippers were going that way multiple times a week anyway, right? It shouldn’t be?—

“Put it back, Daethie.”

Grumbling, the pixie returned the coin she’d pilfered. Where had she thought to hide it? I gathered the money again, filling the two pouches equally, and handed Lu’s back to him.

“Hang onto it for now,” I told him, straightening up.

“It wouldn’t be good to have all our money in one place.

I don’t know what crime is like in these parts, so keep your eyes open.

” Considering the shade of the sky, I added, “Let’s focus on finding a safe place to stay the rest of the night.

We can ask around to figure out our next move in the morning. ”

Second to the excitement of being one step closer to calling this job done was that of sleeping in a real bed. How long had it been? Several years, to be sure.

“You good?” I offered Hohem a hand. He waved it off and helped his brother to his feet, maintaining his grip on Vyrain’s forearm until he stopped swaying.

“All right, then.” Luthri faced the group with a dazzling smile. “Shall we?”